During the last decade or so, many planning theorists have taken a so-called communicative turn, to the point where somiie have declared the emergence of a dominant new paradigm supported by increasing consensus among theorists. We wish to raise a number of broad questions about the communicative paradigm and claims for its theoretical dominance. We point to alternative analytical positions that focus on issues of power, of the state, and of political economy, in ways that are often underplayed in the communicative literature and that demonstrate a healthy diversity in the field. We offer six critical propositions about communicative planning theory as a contribution to the ongoing debates, in theory and practice, about the conitested nature of planning, its practices and effects.

While stuLdies undertaken by communicative planninig theorists provide valuable inisights inito everyday platnning practice, there is a growing debate arounid the need for greater acknowledgement of relationis of power atnd iniequality. In particular, communicative planning theory has tended to obscure planning's problematic relation to the state. This paper openis for debate conceptionis of public dis-course in planning that, on the one hand, draw on Habermas's notions of communiicative rationality, but on the other, fail to critically examine his positioning of these in opposition to state and economy. It is argued that the implications of critiques of Habermas's ideas nmay involve questioning the very possibility of comntLinicative planning itself.

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During the last decade, a growing number of planning theorists have taken a 'communicative turn' (Healey, 1996) in describing and theorizing urban and regional planning. A rapidly growing amount of work drawing on Habermasian, ethnographic and related frameworks has prompted some to articulate the emergence of new forms of 'collaborative' or 'deliberative' planning (Healey, 1997; Forester, 1999, respectively), and to declare the ascendancy of a 'new paradigm' (Innes, 1995), or the existence of 'consensus' among scholars about key theoretical and methodological questions (Mandelbaum, 1996).In what follows, we wish to question some of these claims by advancing two main arguments. First, that communicative planning, despite its marked contribution to the understanding of planning, is but one in a number of recent approaches to theorize planning. Second, that some aspects of the communicative approach are problematic as a theoretical basis for planning, mainly because they draw attention away from the underlying material and political processes which shape cities and regions.We will also observe a persisting confusion in planning theory, linked to the inability of theorists to agree on two fundamental definitions: what is 'theory' and what is 'planning'. In our work, we define 'planning', after Lefebvre, as the public production of space; that is, all policies and practices which shape the urban and regional environment under the auspices of the modern state.The central subject of this essay -'theory' -can also be defined in many ways. We lean towards the meaning identified by Raymond Williams (1983: 316-18) of theory as 'an explanatory scheme', or in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary, 'suppositions explaining a phenomenon; a sphere of speculations and concepts as distinguished from that of practice'. To be sure, analysis can never be neatly separated from normative and ethical assumptions, though we stress the explanatory, conceptual, analytical, deconstructive and critical aspects as the main 'pillars' of the theorizing endeavor, without which the prescriptive and normative aspects of theory are often shallow and ineffective (see also Yiftachel, 1989;Fainstein, 2000).

This essay outlines the main aspects of Foucault's notion of governmentality as a historically contingent and dispersed form of power seeking to act on the action of others and on the self. It explores conceptual dimensions of governmentality and its connections to Foucault's historical philosophical investigations of truths, rationalities and the subject. As a focus of geographical analysis, Foucauldian approaches first appear in historical geographies of disciplinary institutions, but this focus on the enclosed spaces of discipline also raises questions about the management of populations beyond the institutional walls. Governmentality approaches are now found in nearly every sub-field of human geography, forming the basis of much innovative work exploring the significance of space in projects of government.1636 Space and government: governmentality and geography